Yesterday I witnessed something that, to me, seemed ridiculous. Someone spent a lot of money on a Ferrari 458 Italia (which you can buy for $250,000) that had been turned into a poorly-built, non-street-legal prototype vehicle for the Ferrari LaFerrari. Janky wires abound, the battery is in the passenger’s footwell, the nose has been covered in a hideous black bumper, there are mysterious access panels built into the rear quarter panels — it’s ugly, poorly built, and cannot be driven legally on public roads. And yet, here’s how much someone spent on it, and why I think it’s both a terrible deal and also a good one.
One thing I’ve learned watching auctions with Beau at Pebble Beach is: What goes into a car’s value is a complicated concoction that blends some engineering with a bit more styling with a bit more scarcity and then with an absolutely enormous amount of history/pedigree. Two vehicles that are almost exactly identical can command totally different prices depending upon who owned it, what it was used for, whether it was ever made famous by some advertisement or movie appearance or by race wins, and on and on.
This helped me understand what was happening yesterday when I watched people bid on this prototype Ferrari — a 458 Italia modified with a V12, and known internally at Ferrari as “F150 Muletto M4”:
It’s interesting, but it’s also an undrivable prototype that, per RM Sotheby’s — where the vehicle was auctioned — “cannot be road registered.” It’s just a 458 with some jankily-grafted-in guts from a LaFerrari; look at that nose — it’s hideous! And yet, someone bought it for an absurd amount; here’s the auction taking place live:
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Though the video shows that the car sold for $1.1, after fees that ended up being$ 1,215,000 USD!
Why? How? Who’s buying this undrivable car? “What a waste of money! It’s basically a statue!” I said after the auction was done. Then Beau learned me a thing or two.
“Actually, that’s not a bad buy,” he said. “It’s an incredibly unique vehicle, and in the Ferrari world, that’s a big deal.” That got me to think about some of the other cars that sold for big dollars at the RM Sotheby’s auction. Let’s pull a couple of those up:
This is a beautiful BMW M1 with only 3,887 miles on the clock. With a value of over $600,000, you can bet that the owner — lest they’re so rich they don’t care about preserving its value — likely won’t put very many miles on this thing. That certainly has been the case with this 1973 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona:
It has a few more miles, at 5,710, but look at its mileage history!:
By 1976 the car was in the ownership of Frederick Fitzgerald, who advertised it in both the New York Times and AutoWeek as having 3,100 miles and “never driven in rain.” It was sold in 1977 to the partnership of Dick Barbour and O. Edgar Rouhe of California, eventually passing to Mr. Rouhe alone; he retained ownership of the car for nine years. It then passed to Bruno Broseghini and then to longtime Ferrari connoisseur and enthusiast, Charles T. Wegner, returning to Illinois with 3,980 miles.
Mr. Wegner sold the car in 1995 to Arthur E. Coia II of Providence, Rhode Island, who the following year had it refinished to the original color by Shelton Ferrari in Fort Lauderdale, Florida—still the most major work that the Ferrari has received in its low-mileage life. Mr. Coia occasionally exhibited the car, including winning its Platinum Award at the Cavallino Classic in Palm Beach in 1999.
In 2004, chassis number 16943 passed to Marc Fisher of Greenwich, Connecticut, who repeated its Platinum at the Cavallino Classic five years later. After keeping the car for nine years, he sold it to another East Coast enthusiast, beginning a series of short-term ownerships, eventually culminating with its arrival in the present significant collection in the summer of 2014. It has remained in good company there for the last decade. It is in beautiful condition for its age, with satisfying originality of components (including the numbers-matching engine and gearbox) throughout, as noted in the accompanying Ferrari Classiche Red Book issued in 2024.
Displaying only 5,710 miles at the time of cataloguing, believed to be its original mileage since new, this Daytona remains original and unrestored aside from the aforementioned refinish to its correct color. In addition to its Ferrari Classiche Red Book, it is accompanied by its original warranty card.
As you can see, 3,100 of those 5,710 miles — that’s 54 percent — were put on in the first three years of the car’s ownership. Since 1976, the car has only driven 2,610 miles!
That’s the case with many rare cars that pop up at these Pebble Beach auctions. Initially, the owners drive them, as the cars are less scarce, replacement parts are plentiful, and hey, it’s a new car — why the heck not drive the wheels off it. But once the cars get old and rare, many of them become, essentially, statues, sitting in garages for years, only driven a couple of miles annually, if at all.
Speaking of statues, a literal statue sold at the auction for $66,000:
So in that context, I guess this prototype LaFerrari selling for $1.2 million isn’t so bad. Like, many of the other vehicles sold — vehicles that are street legal — it’ll sit around, maybe be driven up and down a driveway, maybe trailed to a car show, but otherwise it’s basically a piece of art.
All Images: The Autopian unless otherwise stated
The statue is worth three times more than the most expensive car I’ve ever owned.
There are stamps that have sold for more than this. Of course they are easier to store. There are probably millions of things with less utility than this that are worth more.
Commenting just to add that front wheel gap is offensive. The fitment in general is awful.
Yeah they’re gonna have to redo this whole thing before they try to sell it, really not up to Ferrari’s standards
Usually test mules these days tend to be bound for the scrapper when development is finished, so imo it’s a rare opportunity to hang onto a piece of history even if it’s not road legal…unless you slap an M plate on it 😛
Say for instance your net worth is $1 billion. For that person, $1.2 million is only 0.0012% of their net worth. This purchase would be comparable to a person with a $1 million net worth spending $1,200 on a car. What do we learn from this? There are unfathomably rich folks out there.
I agree, but having worked in banking for long enough to see behind the scenes of Certified Rich People, one thing we always looked at for loan approvals is “Outside Net Worth” or “Outside liquidity” — both refer to the idea of stripping away all their valuations (public or private) for closely held companies or even big ones, like Musk with Tesla or Bezos with Amazon. Or even more conservatively, how much actual net short-term cash do they possess after current debts are removed? It was amazing how often that number was small or even negative, even for people “worth” a billion or more.
You’d be shocked how much lower the number is than their stupid “Net Worth” number. We essentially considered Net Worth meaningless, especially if it could only be liquidated by selling a $20MM home (at a loss…) or liquidating company stock which, like the Heisenberg Principle, actually changes the value of that stock while the transaction is underway.
What a world we’ve created…
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don’t they help themselves, no
But when the taxman come to the door
Lord, the house lookin’ like a rummage sale, yeah
It ain’t me.
I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no, no
I know a few people like that.
Hell, for a few weeks I was one. I helped start a company that got bought by a big tech company for stock that took a year to complete and during the year the stock went way up to $80 then went down to $8 . At the end of the whole debacle the IRS decided I owed tax on a million dollars but I in fact had 100,000 which was much less than the tax bill. About half the tax bill in fact. The worst part was that I paid off all my credit cards. I could have paid off the tax and declared bankruptcy and been fine. It took about ten years to crawl out of that hole. Then it got much worse, but that’s another story.
So net worth of a million on paper but a couple hundred thousand in debt? Yeah, got that tee shirt.
Most people I know like that have some asset that they can’t realistically sell or usually someone else has control over selling it, but not much of an income.
A guy that works at Trader Joe’s and owns a forest in upstate New York.
Well, yeah, but what’s the alternative? Holding 10% or 20% of your net worth in government bonds? In cash? What does it take to be a legitimately “wealthy” person?
Two other ways to think about a billion dollars:
The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is roughly a billion dollars.
A million seconds is about 11.6 days, a billion seconds is a bit over 31.6 years.
Excellent!
Drive your cars.
This! Do as Sydney says!
Yeah, but if you’re a collector and have, say, even a modest 10 cars…that means you’re driving each one about 1/10 as a person who owns one. David Tracy and Mercedes Streeter both rarely or never drive some of their cars, and they aren’t even worth that much.
The more pairs of shoes I own, the longer the others last because I can only wear one pair at a time.
Ferrari or not, fast as it may be, that is one shed-built looking frankencar. It can’t be driven so I just don’t get the appeal of flexing that you own this uniquely ugly Ferrari. Who fucking cares? Oh right, the other Ferrari d-bags might care so what a “great buy”?
A fool and it’s money (in this case, A LOT of it) was easily parted, it seems.
You could register and drive that here in Florida. Not a problem at all,
When a Florida Ferrari loves its sister very much…
With enough money (which the new owner clearly has) I reckon you could modify it enough to to pass ‘Individual Vehicle Approval’ here in the UK, as if it was a kit-car.
Money laundering?
If the seller is a politician, then it could be a bribe.
Or somehow a tax write off to offset ‘gains’ made elsewhere…
As the saying goes, its worth whatever the buyer is willing to pay for it. Even if my net worth started with a “b” I wouldn’t pay that kind of money for that car. I’m a user, not a collector.
I am dumbfounded that DT sees buying a pike of parts for $1.1 million is a smart investment when he usually pays couch cushion money for his cars
I don’t see this article as him saying it’s smart, just that it’s not as dumb as he originally thought.
Some people have very large couches
Didn’t the article say it was Beau who thought it a decent investment at $1.2M?
Given the buyer (at that price) is likely only going to make money when they resell it xx number of months or years from now…
assuming history of such rare mules sales support consistently beating inflation… even if not avg. securities returns & assuming the buyer gets some sort of satisfaction of getting to own some piece of history, I would agree.with Beau.
I tried to make this point yesterday about setting prices for new cars. But I wasn’t as eloquent. Value is more than one persons evaluation of a vehicle.
It’s easy to be upset that someone wasted $1.2M on this when there are so many better causes the money could have gone to, but while that may be true, there are just as many worse things the money could have gone to. At least this is interesting and allows us to see pictures (the article wasn’t really about the car) of something that is, in my opinion, interesting.
It’s nice to think about the positives of all this.
Say all you want, next time it sells it’ll be for more. If you think about it as an investment, it’s not that crazy. Plus, it’s a lot more fun to look at than a 401k statement.
It’s also possible the new owner spends $1bn on charitable causes.
Also it’s hardly lost, there’s always market for these things.
Would have I personally bought it? No. But I think the rich folks see this more like an weird investment than driver.
100p would buy this if I had the money. And assuming that if you’re rich enough for this, you’re also rich enough that
A. You have a private track/roads you can actually drive it on
B. You can fly in an actual LaFerrari engineer to fix the thing when it breaks down
“Statue” problem solved
If you have $1.2M to blow on a Ferrari test mule, I’m guessing the ticket for an unregistered vehicle wouldn’t really worry you much.
That is assuming this thing doesn’t just get stashed in a warehouse until it emerges at another auction in 3 years.
It’s not so much the ticket I’d be worried about, but a possible impound. But then again, if you’re that rich, you can either by the car back or buy the whole town that impounded it
IMHO as the older guys age out the vehicles getting big money will change and those who own the old style will lose their shirts.
There is a recognized nostalgia arc of the market.
Drive them while you are alive.
I don’t get the hate. I thought that a one-off factory engineering prototype would be, you know, cooler than a production car, if you had the space.
At least they’re not using these for money-laundering, otherwise prices would be at least 10x.
Like over a BAT
The selling price of this car further proves that Ferrari has their fanbase wrapped around their finger.
Looks like fancy Hollywood David is all about cars that meet requirements for registration and safety these days, but it wasn’t long ago that $1.1 million would have bought him 2.2 million cars.
Everything doesn’t go up in value. For example, Ferrari Daytona prices are apparently stable or skidding, while Ferrari 246 Dino prices are flying. Ten or so years ago, the best Daytona’s sold for over a million while a good 246 sold for $200,000. The price curves for both have since crossed. (According to Hagerty.) It would be interesting to know what that Daytona sold for a decade ago.
Not that it matters now. I can’t afford either…but 20 years ago, Dinos were going for 40 g – and I didn’t buy one then either though I probably could have. Because it seemed silly for someone who isn’t rich to throw so much money at a car. The rich on the other hand, sometimes get richer, depending on their taste in vehicles.
The difference here is this is a 1 of 1 without comps to help with price discovery. I’m pretty sure there’s a buyer with deep pockets out there that will pay to have the only one in the world.
By now, the market for Ferrari pre-production prototypes is pretty well-established. There’s multiple LaFerrari dev cars out there, which is an interesting gambit by Ferrari to defray costs and generate excitement by allowing the well-heeled public to access the engineering journey of a new Ferrari model. This car sold for $715k at Mecum in 2022 as part of a trio of development cars included for sale. And this one was the least expensive–a later development sold for over $2mil I believe.
Sure, you can’t drive them on the road, but in this space the buyer is most likely already a LaFerrari and/or 458 Italia owner and will get the rare chance to compare them in the privacy of a track day.
Your initial take on this was correct, David. It’s ridiculous (to anyone who isn’t stupid-rich).
I’ve realized I’ve been a bit of a jerk this week, but I think a lot of other Autopians also don’t care that much about crazy rich people spending stupid amounts of money at these events. What I would love to see more articles focused on would be learning more about the wild history and crazy features of a lot of these super rare cars that abound at Pebble Beach and the surrounding events.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve often though about taking a trip to Pebble Beach, but I think the obscene, showy displays of wealth would just make me mad.
We write about history and crazy features pretty much daily!
But yeah, Pebble Beach will have some expensive cars.
Next year can you do a feature on the “cheapest” car at Pebble Beach? (second cheapest if you’re bringing back the Aztek)
We do every year when we cover Concours d’Lemons!
You certainly do, and that’s why I love it here! Y’all do a great job and I love being a member, my favorite car space for sure! Just feeling a bit worn down hearing about so many cars that cost 10x my house, haha.
Honestly… I get it!
When all of your money comes from interest, it’s really easy to spend it on silly things.
You could say they are spending their money on interesting things
Even of your money comes from something like real estate rent or being the #1 jackelope salesman west of the Mississippi 1.2 million just isn’t that much if you have a net worth of eeh 100 mil (randomly picked) .
Its the equivalent to me spending $1000 on a car.
I had a client (tax) many years ago who had a, shall we say, wealthy patron who bought her a Mercedes convertible after a luncheon engagement. I was flabbergasted, but upon analysis saw this his spending 40k was equivalent to me driving through McD’s and buying a happy meal.
Having recounted that story, I think it would be amazing to see these unobtainium cars. Their owners and entourage not so much.
Many years ago I did the ratio of Bill Gates’ net worth to mine. This was to determine what it would be for me to spend as much money as Bill did on his $60M home. It turns out, it would be the equivalent of me paying $600 for a house.
Fun game, I just ran mine off bill gates current worth. Mine could only be $120.
Ouch
Look what I have that you don’t have!!!! I’m better than you!!!
Oh, Rolex advertising, right?
There’s a book that neatly summarizes the principle of rarity that is the model for selling “luxury” items. It’s called “Stars Thars” by Dr. SUSS 🙂
The sad reality of life in stage 4 capitalism